NHS 10 year plan welcomed by Derbyshire’s NHS leaders
NHS leaders in Derby and Derbyshire have welcomed the publication of the government’s NHS 10 year plan and thanked local people and staff for their contribution to it.
The Prime Minister launched the 10 Year Health Plan today which sets out how the government plans to deliver on the three shifts of:
- Hospital to community
- Treatment to prevention
- Analogue to digital
A new Neighbourhood Health Service will see teams set up in local communities to improve access to the NHS. The aim is to free up hospitals so they can focus on delivering better and more personalised care.
New health centres will house the neighbourhood teams, which will eventually be open 12 hours a day, six days a week within local communities.
They will not only bring historically hospital-based services into the community – diagnostics, post-operative care, and rehab – but will also offer services like debt advice, employment support and stop smoking or weight management, all of which will help tackle issues which affect people’s health. Read more about the plan [LINK].
Derby and Derbyshire’s Team Up model, which provides reactive and proactive care to people unable to leave their homes, is referenced in the plan as a good example of a neighbourhood team.
Dr Kathy McLean, Chair of NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board, said: “The 10 Year Plan provides detail on how we will deliver on the three shifts of hospital to community, sickness to prevention and analogue to digital.
“We have already made great strides in the right direction through our Team Up way of working in Derby and Derbyshire and we are very pleased to see this referenced as good practice in the 10 year plan.
“We know there is still much work to do but we have the right foundation, and a willing group of partners, who are determined to transform our local health and care services to make them fit for your future needs.”
In Derby and Derbyshire people earlier this year contributed their hopes, aspirations and views about the future of the NHS as part of the process of gathering evidence for the 10 year plan.
Dr Chris Clayton, Chief Executive of NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board, added: “We stand ready in Derby and Derbyshire to deliver the transformation set out in the 10 year plan.
“We are very pleased to have been able to contribute the views of hundreds of local people who we spoke to earlier this year to ask what they wanted from their NHS.
“‘We know the NHS nationally and locally faces great challenges, but we also know we are meeting those challenges through the hard work and innovation of our colleagues and the wider community.”
The new Neighbourhood Health Service referred to in the Plan will see teams set up in local communities to improve access to the NHS. Derby and Derbyshire’s Team Up model, which provides reactive and proactive care to people unable to leave their homes, has been cited by the NHS Confederation and NHS England as a good example of a neighbourhood team.
It is not a new or ‘add on’ service but teams up existing services and creates additional capacity. It means general practice, community care, mental health care, adult social care and the voluntary and community sector work together and with their communities.
Team Up has been shown to be successful in preventing people going hospital unnecessarily, from being admitted if they do go and in reducing the length of time people stay if they are admitted. It also leads to high levels of satisfaction for both patients and professionals.
The team has significantly slowed the growth in hospital attendances and admissions for people living with frailty over the past two years saving approximately 1,000 attendances and 700 non-elective admissions per year with national benchmarking data showing a positive change in Derbyshire.
Derby and Derbyshire has also been embedding other ambitions within the 10-year plan including:
- tackling health inequalities and supporting recruitment through supporting care leavers and people who have been unemployed to use work experience and mentoring as a route into working for the NHS. This work was recognised in a national report from the Careers and Enterprise Company on tackling NHS workforce shortages.
- empowering local communities to work with local GP practices, voluntary organisations and council colleagues to help keep people as healthy as possible, as has happened in the rural community of Hartington in the Peak District. Here communities worked together with their GP practice – which has the highest patient satisfaction ratings in the county – to run falls prevention classes.
- supporting people in mental health crisis and avoid going to local A&E departments through community-based drop-in centres where voluntary and community organisations provide expert support outside a hospital
- preventing heart attacks and strokes through trained volunteers who regularly take blood pressure readings in local community settings, in this way identifying people at potential risk and signposting them to appropriate treatment and lifestyle advice
- diagnosing more people with dementia than the national average, so they and their families and carers can be supported to adapt and manage the condition, helping to avoid crisis events such as falls or delirium.
- helping people like Luke Milner to recover from type 2 diabetes through specialist treatment and community-based support – avoiding the long-term health risks of this condition.